Remember those new high-tech devices the TSA installed in airports, the ones that could see through your clothes to show whether you were carrying a concealed weapon? The government loves the technology so much that, two weeks ago, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the scanners would soon be used at every major US […]
Yesterday, New York’s historic buildings commission denied landmark status to the site two blocks from Ground Zero where a developer wants to erect a 13-story Islamic mosque and community center. Once that decision was announced, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave one of the most moving speeches I’ve heard in a long time. Frankly, I couldn’t care […]
During the Vietnam War, the last time the US was involved in a multi-year military conflict, over 170,000 men were granted conscientious objector status and did not have to go to war. The number was so high because of the draft which, especially in the latter years of the war, meant many men wanted to […]
I received more e-mail about my conversation with Jere Van Dyk today on KTRS/St. Louis than for any interview I’ve done in a long time. Van Dyk is the journalist who was kidnapped by the Taliban in February, 2008, and held hostage for 45 days, a story he recounts in his new book, “Captive: My […]
When the use of back-scatter x-ray machines became more widespread, I knew there would be privacy problems. Some minimum-wage security guy was going to see the outline of someone’s body through their clothes and have a Beavis & Butthead reaction to that physical form. That’s exactly what happened six month ago at Miami International Airport. […]
Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared on the Sunday morning talk shows and indicated a change of course in the Obama administration’s policy regarding reading Miranda warnings to suspected terrorists like Faisal Shahzad, who confessed to planting the botched bomb in Times Square. Today on KTRS/St. Louis, I invited Laura Olson, senior counsel at The […]